A Study In Parentage
by Itty Bitty Albatross
Summary: A quick look at the godly parents of some Sherlock characters, and the traits they passed on.
1. Chapter 1--Beer and Cigarettes

**Beer and Cigarettes. **

Dionysus had never been known for his virtue, or his healthy habits. He liked to travel, sleep around, and drink. The great thing about traveling to Europe was that he had very little power there, unlike in the U.S., so to the habitants of London he was nothing but an adventurous traveler with an encyclopedic knowledge of alcohol.

He met Karen Lestrade in a bar. She spoke with a heavy French accent, and was delighted when he spoke to her in her own language. Please, it was France—he'd been a dozen times exclusively for the food. And damn, could they party. Karen said she didn't put out on the first date—he bought her more wine. Rules got more flexible with the application of alcohol and a godly deviance aura.

Three months later Dionysus popped in on her again, after she hadn't shown up at the bar again and he knew why she wasn't drinking.

"Here, you'll need this." He handed her a glass of scotch and guided her to a seat.

She took the news well, if she did drain the glass.

"What about," she gestured to her still flat stomach, were they both knew another person was gradually growing, "this? Will she—he—it be in danger?"

"No." He assured her. He told her to stay out of America, and the child would (probably) never be troubled by other-worldly things. He was only the god of wine, wild animals, and sexual deviance, and Karen had a steady head on her shoulders. The kid could do a lot worse by way of genetics.

Fast-forward a few decades, and Greg Lestrade rubbed his forehead as he stared at a pile of paperwork. Damn, he could use a drink and a cigarette.

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	2. Chapter 2--Platforms and Politics

**Platforms and Politics.**

Meryl Holmes was brilliant, intuitive, creative. She was the wife of a wealthy politician who never appreciated her talents and skills, despite the fact that Meryl was close to single-handedly keeping her husband's platform well-liked.

Meryl didn't know that the grey-eyed woman who worked at the office was a goddess. She didn't know that the goddess watched her, carefully, taking in the mind hidden behind the short hair. She didn't know just how much attention her genius had gotten from Athena.

Athena saw the woman, working endlessly, with a brain power unrivaled by any Athena had seen in years. She knew that Meryl was barren, and that her husband resented her for it. Athena scheduled Mrs. Holmes' doctor appointments, sitting in the rolling-chair that really wasn't much different from her own throne on Mount Olympus.

Athena didn't come to Europe for the freedom, like Dionysus. She came for the minds, because genius knows no country lines and therefore neither does she. She found one in the tall, imposing politician's wife, and knew that a child here would succeed, away from the problems that made their home with the gods.

Meryl never truly believed the goddess, when Athena turned up, nine months later with an infant. It didn't make sense, logically, but it also didn't matter. Even when Athena showed a small bit of her true form and said "He's mine" it was irrelevant to Meryl. She had a son, who was already brilliant in the purest sense of the word, snuggling in to her chest like he knew he was hers.

He was hers, the office-woman-turned-goddess insisted, and Meryl agreed. College biology disagreed, but where Mycroft grew up to be logical and calculating, Meryl was more inclined to let her emotions rule, just this once.

That didn't stop her from reading the DNA test her husband insisted on, because he refused to accept it.

She never told Mycroft he was a demigod. She assumed he knew she didn't carry him for nine months, because he was so clever and there was never any evidence to prove she did. She let him think that he was adopted, as she was a logical woman and she was comfortable hiding secrets.

Mycroft got that from her, not Athena, and just try telling Meryl otherwise.

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	3. Chapter 3--People and Drawings

**People and Drawings.**

It was probably around ten years later when Athena popped in again, checked on Mycroft, and went south. South to a nice man on the coast, who was nearly her opposite. He was gentle, a painter, who liked the smell of the rivers and the bustle of a small town. He was brilliant, too, in a different way. He saw a person and saw what made them human, and he saw Athena and saw what made her not one.

That happened, sometimes, some people were gifted to see through the Mist, and Mr. Hooper was one of them. He accepted what he saw as miracles and magic, and drew them up for the tourists that stopped in and bought the pictures of small dancing figures and things that wove under the waves. He told Athena as much, when he saw her again. She bought a few drawings, one of them of her, and told him she was going to give him a child. He nodded sagely and thanked her politely, and at first she thought he didn't believe him, but he did.

He named the small, soft baby Molly. He raised her with stories of the things he'd seen, but he always phrased them as stories. He knew the darker, more dangerous things didn't cross the ocean to come here, and Molly probably wouldn't have believed him, anyway.

She was smart, like her mother, but softer, like her father. She understood humans, and people often overlooked the brain she had. But she made it through medical school with flying colors, and she knew her father was proud.

When she compared Sherlock Holmes—one person her intellect had settled on, obsessed over—to her father, it was the highest compliment she could come up with.

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	4. Chapter 4--Judo and Chess

**Judo and Chess.**

It's a bit not good to have a god have two children with the same mortal. It's even less good to have two different gods have children with the same mortal.

'_Fuck it'_, Hermes thought. He always liked breaking rules.

Meryl Holmes was sneaky, and smart, and cunning. He snuck into the office to leave a note for her from Athena concerning the political path of her son, who was ten or so, and had found himself being judo-flipped. It turned out Meryl had stayed in the office late for paperwork, had martial arts training, and he had walked right into her, and been flipped on his rear.

Staring up at her stern face from the floor, upside down, with a sharp pain in his lower back, he thought he had never seen anything more beautiful.

Their relationship was a month-long battle of wits. She knew who he was, even if she hadn't fully accepted the reality of gods, as he had no power in Cheshire, where she was staying.

In her mind, it was a game of chess. In his, it was a game of double solitaire. In the end both of them lost—she had his son, but never became enamored with the god, and had insisted he stay away from both her sons.

_'Can't win 'em all'_, Hermes mused. He looked like a jogger today, stopping by a crime scene to observe the police, the dead man, and the tall detective who pickpocketed the inspector.

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	5. Chapter 5--Westwood and Control

**Westwood and Control**.

Jim Moriarty never knew his mother. To be honest, he never knew much about his father either, but he was just absent.

Eris had visited England to see what the fuss was about. Discord loves company, and there were a handful of other demigods being born there. She loved her kids, she truly did, but she wasn't an ideal mom and she certainly didn't want to deal with a child. So to Europe she trotted, to a bold Scottish man who caught her eye. Here, her kid would be safe. Or, as safe as he wanted to be—Jim was a trouble maker and a little crazy, which turned into a trouble maker with a lot of crazy, as he grew.

That wasn't Eris's problem, and she didn't really mind. The mortals could use a little stirring up.

Moriarty stirred them up. Causing trouble, breaking rules, being the littlest (or biggest, most overwhelming) bit cruel came naturally.

He liked the feeling of power, the control, and the _lack _of control.

He read somewhere that most psychopaths think they're entirely sane. Jim was called a psychopath, and he knew he was, but bloody hell. It ran in the family.

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	6. Chapter 6--Balance and Scales

**Balance and Scales.**

Philip was one thing Nemesis was really, very proud of. He didn't know about who she was, of course, and that was a good thing for the both of them. She saw the way he watched, anyway, the way he balanced the good and the bad.

Nemesis was the goddess of revenge, yes, but not just that—she was the goddess of balance, too, and Philip got a lot of that part of her.

He went to college, got an education, helped people. He restored a little bit of balance to the teeny corner of London he worked in. Oh, he had flaws, and plenty of them, which Nemesis could say without guilt because she didn't raise him and she didn't have a lot of maternal feelings.

When he made a mistake and got punished for it, like when his wife left him or when he lost his job, he took at and understood the scales had been righted.

But most days, Philip Anderson returned to his apartment feeling accomplished, if frustrated. Until the day when the bad completely won over the good with no chance of return, Anderson would work to fix the scales.

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	7. Chapter 7--Needles and Handguns

**Needles and Handguns. **

Ares, with all his patriotism and single-mindedness, hardly ever ventured out of America. Once or twice, and once to a little town in England. The woman he met was a strong-willed, adventurous woman who laughed when he tried to pick her up at a bar. Challenge accepted, he wooed her for weeks, found out she was going through a rough patch in her marriage. She went back to the man, then she found out she was pregnant and it was Ares's—or, Hamish's, because seriously nobody would buy his name being Ares anymore.

He never told her who he was, and she didn't care. She lived outside the U.S., and while the kid may be one hell of a fighter, he'd never have to worry about the monsters and myth and shit. John Hamish Watson was a scrapper from a young age, but nice, not a nasty piece of work like most of Ares's other kids.

He watched the man, his son, a couple of times on the field. Medical doctor, saw a lot of combat and injuries. A soldier, a warrior, someone everyone knew instinctively not to mess with. He could handle a needle the way most of his children handled swords—he was a dead-eye with a hand gun and never shook when it counted.

He wasn't surprised when John fell in with that Sherlock fellow; even if he was taken a bit off guard when he figured out it was Hermes's brat.

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	8. Chapter 8--Doorways

**Doorways.**

In truth, the parents-in-blood-only were all surprised when their kids were drawn to each other. It really shouldn't have been surprising, argued Janus, the god of doorways and choices. They were demigods in a country fairly devoid of demigods—that drew them together, like opposite ends of a magnet or moths to a flame.

They bumped heads and hashed out problems, none of them knowing the truth of parentage and why they interacted as they did.

Janus smiled at his relatives, bickering worse than the children they had spawned, and across the street at his grandson, Mike Stamford, who saw and knew the truth but didn't say anything, because why bother with what wasn't hurting?

Doorways and choices, indeed.

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End file.
